


Fusing From the Center

by skarlatha



Category: Sunshine (2007)
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, The Night Before the Mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:23:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two days before the Icarus II launches, Mace sneaks off base to find some willing women. Instead he finds himself at Capa's house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fusing From the Center

They’re not supposed to leave the base this close to the mission. They’re on lockdown, quarantine, strict evaluation. The powers that be claim that it’s for the safety of the mission, so they don’t go out into the dying world and bring back contaminants that could jeopardize the crew. Someone makes the joke that it’s really a suicide watch, but no one laughs. It’s the mission that’s suicide, not whatever they might bring on board with them, and they all know that even if nobody talks about it. 

But the lockdown isn’t enforced, or rather it _is_ enforced, but by a lot of people who just happen to be looking the other way when the crew members walk past. The crew members are heroes already, just for being willing to try this wild idea, and no one stops them when they slip out, one by one, to have one last night out. To see people one last time. 

“Aren’t they afraid we won’t come back?” Cassie murmurs when the door to the lockdown area is left rather conspicuously open and unguarded, two days before the _Icarus II_ is scheduled to leave Earth. 

Mace snorts. “We all volunteered for this. And if the mission fails, we’ll die whether we stay on Earth or not.” He walks over to his locker, pulls out his coat. “I’m going out.”

“But you’ll be back?” Cassie asks. 

Mace ignores the question. 

//

Capa has a house just off-base. It’s small, unremarkable, not the sort of place where Mace would expect the last hope of Earth to be living. Mace doesn’t know why he knows where Capa lives, and he certainly doesn’t know why that’s where he’s ended up. He has condoms in his car that he fully intended to use on any and all willing females he could find at the bar three miles up the road, but instead here he stands on Capa’s porch, his hands shoved in his coat pockets and his eyes on his feet as he waits to see if Capa is going to answer the door.

Capa does, after a long time. He opens the door and freezes for a split second before mumbling Mace’s name. Even with the one-syllable word, Mace can tell that Capa’s voice is just the tiniest bit slurred, his eyes taking just slightly too long to react to the turning of his head. 

“Are you drunk, dude?” Mace says, raising an eyebrow.

Capa shrugs, looking past Mace out into the night. “Mostly stoned, but yeah. Both.” 

“Care to share?” Mace keeps his eyebrow raised and pulls his hands slowly out of his pockets. The cold air hits his skin and he shivers. 

Capa sees the shiver, looks down at Mace’s bare hands. “Sure. Come in.” He keeps his eyes on Mace’s hands while he opens the door. Mace follows Capa’s gaze and then rubs his hands together, feeling the warmth between his palms grow and hoping that the brisk movement will get Capa’s eyes off of his exposed flesh. Capa steps back and Mace walks inside. 

“You know we’re supposed to get a blood test before we board the _Icarus_ ,” Mace points out as he peels off his coat and sits down on the couch. 

Capa sits down beside him and offers him a pipe and a lighter. “As long as we don’t have some disease that’s going to kill us before we finish the mission, they’ll let us board no matter what,” he says, quietly. 

Mace gives a soft grunt of agreement, then flicks the lighter and takes a pull from the pipe. He leans back and blows the smoke up toward the ceiling in a concentrated stream, then passes the pipe back to Capa. 

Capa takes it but doesn’t light it. He moves it around in his hands, examining it from every angle as though he’s never seen it before. Mace watches Capa’s fingers as they move.

“Are you afraid?” Capa asks after a moment. 

Mace considers just giving his usual bravado-laden denial, but it’s Capa asking, and the tendons in Capa’s slender hands are strangely mesmerizing. So he thinks about the question instead of answering. Capa offers the pipe again and Mace takes it, glad to have a way to stall while he considers his answer. He takes another hit and holds the smoke in his lungs for several seconds. 

Finally, he exhales. “No,” he says, letting the word come out as smoke. “I don’t think I am.”

“You should be,” Capa says, then turns and looks at Mace. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we all die,” Mace answers. He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the couch. “But at least this way we go out fighting.”

Capa doesn’t answer. He gets up and walks into the attached kitchen and opens the refrigerator, pulling out two bottles of beer. Mace gets a glimpse of brilliant white from the inside of the fridge as Capa closes it. 

“Dude, your fridge is empty,” Mace tells him, then takes a look around the room, noticing for the first time that the only things in it are the couch, a coffee table, and a lamp. The wall across from the couch is covered by stacks of cardboard boxes, each taped securely shut and labeled with Capa’s small, neat handwriting. “Dude, your _house_ is empty.”

“Yeah,” Capa says, coming back to the couch and handing Mace one of the beer bottles. “I thought I’d make it easier on my family in case I don’t come back. This way they just take the boxes and go.”

“And if we come back?” Mace takes a long drink from the bottle and looks at Capa out of the corner of his eye.

Capa shrugs. “Then I’ll unpack.” He pauses, looks away. “We’re not coming back.”

Mace sighs and holds the beer bottle up to his lips. “I know,” he says, then immediately tips the bottle up and takes a swig. 

“I think that’s better,” Capa says after a moment. “Not coming back. For me, anyway.”

Mace turns his head slowly and looks at Capa, raising his eyebrow again. “You have a death wish, then?” 

He waits to see if there will be a flash in Capa’s eyes, something to show that he’s human, alive, touchable. There isn’t. Capa has the bluest eyes he’s ever seen, and Mace wonders what they would have looked like in the sunshine, on the beach, with waves crashing in the background. In another world, where everything wasn’t dying. 

It takes Capa a long time to answer. “No,” he says, finally. “I just don’t know what I’d do if I came back.” He leans back slowly, resting his head against the back of the couch like Mace was doing earlier. “Whether we live or die, I won’t have a purpose anymore.”

Mace laughs bitterly. “Come on, man, you’re the smartest person on Earth. You’ll find another purpose.”

“I’m not that smart,” Capa murmurs, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m just a recovering pyromaniac who built a really big bomb.”

“Yeah, sure,” Mace says. He rolls his eyes. “What’s your IQ?”

Capa doesn’t answer. Mace turns and looks at him again, resting his cheek on the back of the couch. Capa has a long neck that reminds Mace of marble. He wants to press his lips against it, feel Capa’s pulse quicken against his mouth. He wonders if Capa would respond, or if he would just sit still and wait for Mace to give up and pull back.

Capa turns his head, and Mace forces his eyes up to meet Capa’s. Blue meeting blue, but Mace’s eyes still have some fire in them and Capa’s are iced over like the rest of the world.

“I’m tired of being cold,” Mace says, then wonders why he would say such a thing. 

“Is that why you’re flying into the sun?” Capa asks softly. 

Mace thinks about his father and the way his ever-present scowl had relaxed for just a few seconds after Mace had told him he’d been chosen for the mission. He leans forward, picks up the pipe Capa had put down on the coffee table, fumbles with the lighter, takes a hit. 

“Why _are_ you doing this, Mace?” Capa reaches out and puts his hand lightly on Mace’s knee. 

Mace puts the pipe back down and leans back. He thinks about pushing Capa’s hand away, but it’s warm on his leg and the marijuana is slowly eroding his ability to care about personal boundaries. He leaves it there. “Because the alternative is sitting back and waiting to die with everyone else.”

Capa’s fingers tighten on Mace’s knee. “Are you leaving anyone behind?”

“My parents,” Mace answers. “A brother.” He pauses for a long time, debating with himself, then looks down at Capa’s hand. “Olivia.”

A quiet but noticeable intake of breath. Capa moves the tips of his fingers on Mace’s knee in a very small caress. “Your girlfriend?” he asks, almost too softly to hear. 

“My daughter,” Mace says. He finishes off his bottle of beer and holds it up in the air. “Want another one?”

Capa nods, staring at Mace. Mace ignores the stare and gets up from the couch. Capa lets his hand fall away from Mace’s leg, then grabs his own beer bottle and downs the rest of it. Mace goes into the kitchen and gets two more bottles of beer from the otherwise-empty fridge. 

When he sits back down, Capa puts his hand back on Mace’s leg, a little above the knee this time. Mace raises an eyebrow at it but doesn’t comment. He takes a drink of beer and waits.

“I didn’t know you had a kid,” Capa says after a moment. 

“I don’t ever see her,” Mace answers. He goes back to watching the tendons in Capa’s hand move under the skin. “Her mom hates me. Told me to stay far away from them.” He laughs humorlessly. “Guess I’m doing that now, huh?”

“Have you told her goodbye?” Capa turns toward Mace, sliding his hand another half an inch up Mace’s leg. Mace watches the movement and tries to decide if it’s even intentional or if Capa’s just too stoned to notice that his hand is inching up Mace’s thigh. If he’s even registered that Mace still isn’t stopping him.

“She’s three,” Mace answers. It’s really too delayed of an answer for a normal conversation, but conversations stopped being normal a long time ago, back when they lost _Icarus I_. “She’s three years old and she doesn’t know me. So no, I’m not going to call.”

“Her dad’s a hero,” Capa insists. “She’ll want to know that when she’s older.”

“ _If_ she’s older,” Mace corrects. “And I’m not a hero. I’m a grease monkey with some military training, that’s all.”

“You’re an incredibly competent engineer,” Capa points out. “That’s why you’re on the mission.”

Mace searches Capa’s eyes again. “How about I admit I’m a kickass engineer if you admit you’re a genius?”

Capa smiles very slightly, the first time Mace has seen him smile in the whole time they’ve been in training together for the mission. “Deal,” he says, holding up his beer bottle for a toast.

Mace clinks his bottle against Capa’s, then takes a sip. He looks down at Capa’s hand again. “Do you remember what it was like to be warm?”

“Outside?” Capa asks, then shakes his head. “No. Not really.”

“I do,” Mace says. He hesitates, then puts his hand down on his own thigh beside Capa’s, almost close enough to touch. “When I was a kid, my dad took us to Mexico one summer. It was July and the temperature at the beach got up to almost eighty degrees.” He smiles a little at the memory. “We got sunburned and we loved it. My parents almost never got us to come back inside.” 

“I almost froze to death once,” Capa says. “My dad was yelling at me and I stormed outside and got caught alone at night in the snow. They said I was almost gone when they found me.”

Mace brushes Capa’s thumb with his smallest finger. “What was it like?”

“Dying?” Capa asks, then shrugs. “Warm. I got colder and colder and then... suddenly I felt warm. Comfortable. Peaceful.”

“But they found you,” Mace points out, quite unnecessarily because _of course_ they found him. He hooks his finger around Capa’s thumb and leaves it there. 

Capa stares at their fingers. There’s almost a full minute of silence before he breathes, “They found me.”

“The whole planet’s happy they did,” Mace murmurs. He tightens his finger around Capa’s thumb.

Capa laughs softly, still staring at their hands. “Maybe. If the mission goes well.”

“Even if it doesn’t.” Mace unhooks his finger from Capa’s thumb and moves his hand on top of Capa’s. “Even if we all die and Earth goes into deep freeze… it makes it better knowing we tried everything.”

Capa’s eyes don’t waver from their hands, but he smiles just a little. “That we did not go gentle into that good night,” he says softly.

“Hey, cut that out,” Mace warns, but there’s no venom in the tone. “We’re not close enough to a planetary eulogy to start spouting poetry yet.”

Capa’s smile broadens a little, and Mace wishes he could see the physicist’s eyes instead of just the downslanted eyelashes that cover them. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” Capa says, then flicks his eyes up to Mace’s.

Mace starts to say something, but he forgets what when he sees the way Capa is looking at him. Eyes wide, lips slightly parted; it’s a look he’s seen hundreds of times on the girls he’s dated, but he’s never seen that expression on another man before, or at least not when it’s directed at him. Capa’s skinny and strangely graceful, but not in the way that women are, and Mace knows that if he digs his fingers into Capa’s arms he’ll feel hard muscle instead of the soft, yielding flesh he’s used to.

And most nights, that would bother him. Most nights, he would go back out to his car and find the nearest club and bury himself in some faceless woman’s perfumed body and silk sheets, and he would spend the entire night letting her fingers leave trails of warmth all over him until some of the nagging cold faded from his bones. 

But tonight he’s buzzed and he’s spent the last hour mentally cataloguing the tendons in Capa’s hands, and so when Capa’s breath goes off-rhythm and he licks his lips, the sight of Capa’s tongue goes straight to Mace’s cock and Mace leans forward and kisses the physicist hard. 

Capa kisses back without hesitating, and Mace can’t help but wonder if Capa knew this was going to happen, if he’d seen it coming the second he opened the door and saw Mace standing there. One thing Mace had learned from working with astrophysicists was that everything boiled down to an equation in the end, and if you knew enough of the variables you could see deep into the future, all the way up until the heat death of the universe, and he's pretty sure that Capa knows at least enough of the variables to tell what was always going to happen tonight.

X = Mace, Y = Capa, Q = the _Icarus_ , B and Z are the pot and the alcohol, and when you add and divide and square and then multiply everything by some irrational number constant that represents Capa’s hands, this is what you get. And just like in real math, Mace can figure out the answer to the problem but can’t conceptualize what that answer _means_ , but Capa can. Mace is sure of it. 

But none of that really matters, because Capa’s mouth is hot and his tongue is already in Mace’s mouth, and at some point Mace notices that Capa is in his lap, and he can’t for the life of him remember if Capa was the one who moved or if he himself had hauled the physicist over on top of him, but either way he can feel Capa pressing against his stomach and for the first time since the beach in Mexico, Mace forgets that the world is too cold to sustain life. 

Mace’s hands are on Capa’s hips and he slides his hands up Capa’s sides, letting the fabric of the physicist’s t-shirt push up and then fall back over him as Mace lets his fingers trail along Capa’s skin. He moves his hands around to Capa’s lower back and pulls him in closer, tighter. Capa makes a low groaning sound, almost too softly for Mace to hear, and Mace lets out a groan of his own when Capa rocks his hips and presses himself down against Mace’s lap. 

Mace brings his hands back around to Capa’s front, letting his palms brush against Capa’s stomach for a moment before Mace starts to unbutton the physicist’s pants. Capa breaks the kiss for long enough to whip his own shirt off over his head, and Mace is momentarily distracted by the sight of Capa’s defined collarbone. He dips his head down to kiss it, using his tongue and his teeth to follow the whole length of the bone from the shoulder inward until he’s kissing Capa’s neck. He feels Capa’s hands on his head and he recognizes the motion of fingers that want to curl into hair, and he wishes he hadn’t agreed to the military haircut because he wants to feel Capa pulling at him, making his scalp sting with the force of it.

He yanks Capa’s zipper down and shoves his hand into Capa’s underwear, wrapping his fingers around the other man’s cock. Capa sucks in a breath through his teeth with a hissing noise and throws his head back, arching his body so that he presses harder against Mace’s hand, and Mace moves his mouth over to kiss Capa’s throat and then drags his lips up to Capa’s mouth. 

“I want to fuck you,” Mace growls against Capa’s lips before he kisses him again, too hard to be comfortable but hot, desperate, demanding. 

Capa kisses back for a few seconds and then breaks away, panting. He leaves his eyes closed and doesn’t move his lips away from Mace’s. “We don’t have anything.”

Mace thinks about the condoms in his car, but it’s too cold outside to go get them and his lizard brain would rather die than let go of Capa, because in less than forty-eight hours they’ll be in space and this might be the last time Mace ever feels warm. And he knows that the odds that either of them are carrying anything that would have made it past the rigorous physical exams are extremely, almost laughably low, but the fate of humanity rests on them making it to the sun and so they can’t take that chance.

So instead of answering, Mace just nods and starts stroking Capa with firm movements, trying to mirror what he likes himself and watching as Capa’s face dissolves back into a haze of lust. Capa moans, throwing his head back again, and Mace reaches up with his free hand and pulls Capa’s chin back down so that he can crush their lips back together, taking Capa’s mouth the way he wants to take Capa’s body. 

Capa pulls away with a low moan that’s almost a whimper, and Mace’s whole body tries to follow him as the physicist stands up and quickly steps out of what’s left of his clothes. He puts both hands on Mace’s shoulders and pushes him to the side and down until he’s lying on his back on the couch, and Mace knows he should be giving Capa’s whole body a slow, burning look but instead he can’t tear his eyes away from the curve of Capa’s neck, there where the skin is still red from having teeth raked over it only minutes before. 

Mace pulls off his own shirt while Capa makes short work of Mace’s pants, and Mace lifts his hips to let the other man slide the clothing off of him. Then all he can feel is the heat and the weight of Capa’s body pressed against him, skin to skin, all along the length of his own body, and he reaches down with both hands to dig his fingers into the smooth skin of Capa’s ass. He leans up from the couch to kiss Capa again at the same time that he pulls Capa closer to him, and his dick twitches at the strangled noise Capa makes when Mace’s abs move against the physicist’s cock.

Capa starts thrusting against him, gasping at the friction, and Mace goes back to sucking on Capa’s neck. He hooks one leg around Capa’s waist and rocks with him, his breath coming quickly now, and he concentrates on the way Capa’s muscles flex under his fingers as he moves because he can’t concentrate on the way the other man’s skin feels against his cock or it will all be over too soon. 

“Mace,” Capa breathes, and he pulls back and stares down into Mace’s eyes, still thrusting against his stomach. His eyes are glazed over, and the glassiness reminds Mace of the way ice looks when it starts to melt. “Mace, I…” 

Mace kisses him again, a little more softly than before but still far from gentle. “Come on my chest,” he murmurs when the kiss breaks for a second. “I want to feel it.”

Capa’s hips jerk at the command, then the thrusts speed up. Mace’s cock is aching now, and every time Capa grinds up against him, the sensation makes Mace’s entire body shudder with lust. And then all of Capa’s muscles tighten at once and he stops kissing, squeezing his eyes shut and leaving his mouth open, and Mace bucks his hips up to press hard against Capa’s and it pushes the physicist over the edge. Mace keeps his eyes on Capa’s throat while the other man’s come splashes on his chest, warm and wet, each drop sending shockwaves straight to Mace’s cock. 

There’s a moment of stillness while Capa finishes riding out his climax and Mace stays still, watching Capa’s face and wondering if there will finally be fire in the man’s eyes when he opens them again. Then Capa leans down and kisses him again, eyes still closed, and a guttural noise rips out of Mace’s throat as Capa moves against him.

Capa starts kissing his way down Mace’s chest and stomach, pausing to lick himself off of Mace’s skin, and Mace starts thrusting up, fucking the air because even that’s better than lying still while Capa’s mouth torches his skin. And when Capa flicks his tongue against the tip of Mace’s cock, it’s all he can do not to let go right then, and the only reason he bothers to hold back is because he’s desperate to feel the heat of Capa’s whole mouth on him. 

Capa puts his lips on the tip of Mace’s cock and slowly slides them down over the shaft, pressing his tongue against the underside of it as he goes. Mace puts his hands in Capa’s hair and presses the other man’s head down lightly, the muscles in his neck straining with the effort it took him not to explode. 

And when Capa starts to move his head up and down, Mace’s brain shorts out and there is nothing in the whole world but Capa’s lips and Capa’s tongue and the way Capa’s face had looked when he was coming, and that was it. Mace thrusts his hips up one more time and comes hard, yelling something that might have been Capa’s name. 

Capa stays on him, still sucking until Mace is done, then he pulls his lips slowly off of Mace’s cock and licks the tip clean. Mace stares at him and slowly unwinds his hands from Capa’s hair. 

“This isn’t going to happen on the _Icarus_ ,” Capa says softly, and Mace isn’t sure if it’s a demand or a prediction. Capa unfolds himself out to lie wedged between Mace and the back of the couch, then curls his limbs around Mace’s body. 

Mace lets himself relax and he puts a hand back in Capa’s hair, moving it leisurely through the strands this time. “I know,” he says after a moment. “It’s better that way.”

They lie there in silence for a long time before either of them speaks again. 

Capa traces his fingers in a complicated design on Mace’s chest. “It’s funny,” he says after a moment. “We always imagined that we would be the ones to destroy the world. Global warming and nuclear war and all the things we were going to do to the planet. And here we’re getting fucked by the sun and there’s nothing any of us could have done to keep it from happening.”

Mace stares up at the ceiling, his arm still curled around Capa. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to acknowledge reality yet because with reality comes the cold that hasn’t started seeping back into his skin yet. He wants to keep it that way for as long as possible, and talking about the fate of humanity will just push them back into the real world.

Capa doesn’t know that, though, and Mace doesn’t tell him, so he continues. “And maybe it will turn out that we’re the ones to save the world. Not destroy it.”

Mace frowns and stops stroking Capa’s hair. 

“If we save the world, we’ll be heroes,” Capa murmurs. “Your daughter would want to know that her father is a hero.”

“Her father’s going to burn to death in the sun,” Mace snaps. “And so are you. We all are.”

“Still,” Capa says. His fingers slow on Mace’s chest until they’re not moving anymore. “Before we get out of com range… you should send her a message.” 

Mace frowns more deeply and then sighs. “Maybe. Before we get out of range. Maybe.”

“I’ll make sure you have privacy to record it,” Capa says. 

Mace wishes he could rewind time, back to a few minutes before when Capa was slumped on top of him heaving breaths that hadn’t gone back to normal yet. Back when for just a little while, nothing had been life and death and the end of the world. But the spell has been broken and he’s never been one for fairy tales, anyway. 

Mace sits up and picks his clothes up off the floor. His bones are cold already. “I have to go,” he says. “Thanks for the beer.” 

Capa just nods. Mace pulls his clothes on quickly and ducks out the door. He gets into his car and drives out to a field where he can see the constellations. The stars are bright in the cold sky, and Mace gets out and lies down on the hood of his car, feeling the warmth from the engine radiating up from the metal. He closes his eyes and thinks of Mexico, of the waves crashing, of Olivia playing in the surf, of Capa’s eyes in the sun.


End file.
